Gold Sink

[Wulf]

Gold Sink: Gold sink is an economic process by which a video game's ingame currency, or any item that can be valued against it, is removed.

Nordock is in a state of hyper-inflation. We need a gold sink badly to deal with the millions in circulation right now. I've talked to a few players about this and they all agree we need something to spend gold on to give it some value.

The old system of paying for epic levels has been done away with. I don't know if that would be a good thing to bring back or not.

The only suggestion I have heard is to bring back Silent Auctions, by a DM.

Any other ideas?

[raradra]

We paid for levels on Diff server. Kept the money in check.

[Valikar]

We have a lot of ideas, but simply handing better gear for gold is a bandaide at best. Normally what I would suggest is lowering the prices merchants are willing to give you, but thats not possible in nodock persay. We could do things like vanity gear, vanity mounts, very expensive crafting recipes for marginal upgraded epic loot, expensive player housing, increase the costs of ress on epic level players, new levels of alchemy potions like potions that full heal and give regen for X time etc (very very pricey), player construction - goal of X funds needed to build X building in X town for X purpose, we could do a war between cities or factions and players can donate funds and we can simulate battles and monitary losses, we could do something like WoW and ahn qiraj, where players have to donate war funds to certain level before the areas are available to play in.

[Wulf]

I really don't think a nerf of any sort is what is needed. It's almost always better to add something new than to take something away.

Sure, silent auctions are a bandaide, but bandaides are useful. It also has the added appeal of very little work needed to make happen.

On another server I play(ed(ish)) on, they had a similar problem. Epic level long term players, with every item imaginable. So a DM decided to create a "forge" of sorts where for getting specific sets of items and a massive gold cost, the DM would forge a specific new item for the player.

[Valikar]

Better gear is still, in my opinion, not a good option. Brand new gear is sketchy in the balance department at best. Marginal upgrades for existing gear is something i suggested above, as long as they were mild. A +4 to +5, 1d6 fire to 1d8, adding 1d6 fire to something that has no elemental enchantments.. or swaping enchantments for another more useful one 10/- fire for 10/- acid. I'm on board for that sort of upgrading or forging, but not for new items. (I've seen some of the custom gear, most of it was a mistake to hand out whatever the cost) And what exactly is the point of this gear anyway, not many epic characters are challenged by any of the nordock content right now. Adding upgraded gear only really serves to hinder the creation of more challenging areas when we get there (we might, i am considering it) if players have awesome gear already. Especially if they are paying millions upon millions for it, it would clearly need to rival some of the epic gear already if not be significantly better.

And for the sake of devils advocate, lowering the merchants buy costs is the best option to reduce gold inflation. But it's not really feasible in nordock, because there are too many merchants to update and no one has that kind of patience. Unless someone wants to spend 4 or 5 hours+ doing it. People keep their gold but find it more difficult to make more. Give and take usually only applies to something like gear or farming areas and not to things that balance the server.

[Justice_Vanin]

This may not be the answer to the whole gold spending issue, but making some class specific items for classes that don't see much action could be one option. Say Ranger, Barbarian and Harper Scout class specific items could make things interesting!


Justice

[PokeChop]

-

[raradra]

I don't think we're too worried about people having millions in gold. For me though, if it's causing inflation for lower levels that is an issue.

[Otherworldly]

the forge idea sounds interesting to me as well as some of vals ideas. i had an item given to me by vecna years and years ago after dying. he took me to a hellish plane and i made a deal with a devil to be brought back to life, my soul was shattered in to 5 pieces and scattered. one of them was left with me upon my ressurection. it was a custom sentient short sword. damage wise it wasnt anything that special, something like +2 and 1d6 negative energy-*maybe* massive crit 1d6 or an ability decrease but not sure. thing is it added huge rp value. it was a chaotic evil weapon, every x amount of turns i had to make a will save or be taken over for x amount of turns by its will. gave me +20 to intimidate, allowed me to speak a bunch of languages like draconic and infernal to name a couple and a myriad of other things all named under the item description along with the whole story behind the item and a description of the items personality and signed by him. so, vanity items like mounts and cool looking gear would be really cool to spend your money on, also liked to idea of being able to get building made and of course itd be super pricey, but also the forge could work great if the items strength were moderated and could even be used to make really cool things that werent necesarilly super powerful as far as fighting but still something a person would want. battles would be cool. i wouldn't mind setting up a system to bring back the revolution there's all sorts of things that could be done to solve this i'm sure between everyone we could come up with some really fun new things

[Otherworldly]

oh, as far as low levels having too much gold-i've found that lvling seems to be so easy now that by the time i rack up any significant amount of gold im already at epic level. if the lvling were slower then i'd definitely be able to rack up a huge amount long before that, but as is the lvling seems to outpace the hoarding whether youre trying to lvl quick or not. i've actually had trouble with some of the characters i wanna take more time with, i have to very intentionally NOT gain xp which means going out of my way to do very tedious things, like being a rat hunter for long periods of time xD